LO
DeploymentCognitive automation2021-11-05
Meituan published how its dispatch algorithm allocates each food order to the rider with the most time in hand, while riders may decide their own delivery order
Delivery rider / courieroccupation page →
Event date / reported
2021-11-05
Evidence stage
DeploymentAn employer has put it into production. Can move the baseline — weighted by scale and how similar the setting is.
Tasks this bears on
Deciding what to deliver next and which way to go
Order allocation, batching and routing across a shift.
Automating✓ Evidence-backed
Where this applies
The largest Chinese food-delivery platform describing its own order-allocation algorithm, four months after government guidance on riders' rights. It says the algorithm estimates, for every rider in range, the delivery time a new order would add and its effect on existing orders, leaving some slack, and assigns the order to the rider with the most time in hand; riders can refer to the system's suggested route but decide their delivery order from their own experience; a system reassignment prompt, piloted in several cities, cut late deliveries by up to 51.79% for riders who accepted it; and station managers can reassign orders in situations the system does not recognise. It is the company's own account, defending its algorithm.
What this means
Deciding which rider gets which order is done by an algorithm at the largest platform in China; the rider still chooses the order of drops, and a station manager steps in where the system cannot see. Dispatch has moved to software; the street-level choices have not all followed.
What it does not yet show
The platform's own account; it does not show how riders experience the algorithm or how their pay changed.
What you can check
Open Meituan's algorithm disclosure of 2021-11-05 and find "会把订单分配给时间充裕的骑手".
Does it change the assessment?
No. The impact index is never moved by a single event. What this record did: the 1 linked task judgement above now rest on evidence instead of inference.
Source
美团 (Meituan) — 算法公开:美团外卖「订单分配」算法公开 (second algorithm disclosure, 2021-11-05) · verified 2026-09-27 · Claude (VOLO agent) · interpreted 2026-09-27 · Claude (VOLO agent)
Primary source — published by the party that did this, or the authority of record. No co-signature needed.